Lizy: Circular Car Leasing That Cuts CO2 by Skipping New Vehicles

What Lizy actually does

Lizy is a Belgian digital leasing platform built around “circular leasing”: operational leasing and financial renting of used and reconditioned vehicles, not new ones, for SMEs, the self-employed and businesses. Contracts are fully online and all-inclusive, bundling insurance, maintenance, tires and roadside assistance into one monthly payment, with no upfront deposit. Founded in 2018 by Sam Heymans (ex-McKinsey, ex-Google) and Vincent Castus (ex-IBM, ex-Assisto), the company built its model on extending a vehicle’s usable life instead of feeding demand for new ones.

Where circular leasing shows up

• SMEs and self-employed professionals: full-service leasing without the upfront capital or paperwork of buying, sized for small fleets rather than large corporates
• Business fleets: named customers including Comate, Darta, Henchman, smartphoto, Payflip and Elindus lease their company vehicles through Lizy
• Electric vehicle adoption: secondhand EV leasing specifically, positioned against the emissions cost of manufacturing a new EV battery and body

Proof, not just claims

Lizy’s own figures, published on its sustainability page, also cite 9kg of lithium avoided per average C-segment EV battery and note that roughly half of an EV’s lifetime CO2 emissions occur during manufacturing, the structural argument for leasing a car already built rather than commissioning a new one. Independent recognition followed: Lizy won the Fleet Europe Remarketing Sustainability Award 2024 and the Motor Finance Europe Awards 2024 “Best Sustainability Initiative,” both reported by industry press, for extending vehicle life through repeated leasing cycles rather than a single new-to-scrap run.

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Why this belongs on a sustainability directory

Every secondhand lease Lizy writes is a new vehicle that did not need to be manufactured, which is the direct mechanical link to SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production): extending a car’s useful life from the industry-typical 3 to 4 years to 8 to 10 years multiplies the value extracted from the raw materials and energy already spent building it. The same mechanism cuts CO2 at the point it matters most for electric vehicles, where roughly half of lifetime emissions occur in manufacturing rather than driving, which is the concrete tie to SDG 13 (Climate Action).